Danilo Russo & Loretta Tanzarella - Heiden, Lunde, Worley, Muczynski: American Saxophone Sonatas (2018)

Bernhard Heiden
Sonata for E-flat Saxophone and Piano

The first piece Bernhard Heiden composed for saxophone was Sonata for E-flat Saxophone and Piano. This Sonata was written in Detroit in 1937 for saxophonist Larry Teal and was published in 1943 by Schott & Co., Ltd. Since then it has become one of the most performed pieces in the saxophone repertoire. The piece has become a staple of saxophone literature because of the technique required to play the piece, the different creative elements used by the composer and the historical importance of it to saxophone literature.
The forms employed in the three movements of Sonata are traditional forms, such as sonata-allegro and rondo, with twentieth-century variations. There is a great deal of thematic unity within each movement and across the composition as a whole. In addition to direct links between themes and motives as variations of one another, there are also figures that are related to each other as manifestations of a common, underlying musical idea, such as expanding intervals and ambiguity between major and minor tonality. Heiden’s Sonata is a substantial work in both length and difficulty; it is a moderately difficult piece for both saxophone and piano that is approximately 15 minutes in duration.
His writing for saxophone is idiomatic, but includes numerous technical and interpretive challenges.

Lawson Lunde
Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano

This Chicago-based composer and pianist wrote thirteen compositions utilizing the saxophone, and six of those works are sonatas. His compositional style features great lyricism and rhythmic energy. This three movement sonata was dedicated to Cecil Leeson and Brian Minor.
The first movement begins with an a cappella fanfare in the saxophone that leads to the first theme. Lunde employs a modern variation of the traditional sonata form the elements of exposition, development and recapitulation are all present, though obscured somewhat by the composer’s penchant for melodic invention.
Saxophonist Stephen Mauk has described the mood of the second movement as “sacred jazz”.
The ternary form in the movement contrasts an initial hymn-like simple theme with a moody and modulatory agitato the serene ending in F major yields to the effervescent ABACABCA rondo finale of the sonata’s third movement.
The playful nature of the writing is evident throughout, particularly when Lunde uses hocket to interject humor into the third rendition of the A theme. By far the most performed and popular of the composer’s six sonatas, this final work on the program was written in 1959.

John C. Worley
Sonata fo Alto Saxophone and Piano

Profoundly American in each harmony and page is the first of the two Sonatas for Alto Saxophone composed by Worley respectively in 1975 and 1981. The first sonata is a concise composition that contains copious references to American and Russian music. It combines different images rather than real styles: in the first movement “with intensity” is easy to recognize the direct influence of Gershwin and first American composers, especially in the piano accompaniment. The second movement named “with contemplation” shows a great and warm cantabile that comes directly from the jazz of 70thies, becoming essentially a spiritual without words. In the third movement, we are back in Europe with a direct reference to Stravinsky where is possible to listen to a veiled allusion to some pages of the wittiest Shostakovich too.

Robert Muczynski
Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano Op. 29

His two works for solo saxophone, the Sonata Op.29, and Concerto Op.41, are performed often and have become mainstays in saxophone recitals worldwide. In Jean-Marie Londeix’s A Comprehensive Guide to the Saxophone Repertoire the author states that: ―Muczynski’s music is very melodic in an Aaron Copland fashion and very rhythmic and percussive— an American Béla Bartok if you will. The unique combination of these two disparate styles along with the regular use of jazz harmonic structures combines to create Muczynski’s style.
Originally Muczynski fashioned the two movement work with a more evocative title in mind: Desert Sketches or Desert Serenade.
The opening melodic line in the saxophone part of the Sonata Op.29 presents the germ cell that is developed throughout both movements. All of the melodic material in the first movement’s ternary form flows organically from this idea that is restated dramatically in the saxophones altissimo range then transformed into a 5/8 Gershwin-like jazz riff. The movement closes with an austere sotto voce sounding of the opening theme.
In terms of content and character, the second movement is its complete antithesis: a driving toccata, alive with syncopation and rhythmic intricacies, and which proceeds with minimal uncertainty to a dynamic and also decisive conclusion.
The second movement opens with a driving rhythmic figure that frames an altered sonata-rondo form based on a dissonant harmonic underpinning of parallel major-seventh chords that give this movement a feeling of raw energy. The coda transforms the opening thematic material into a scintillating 6/8 that closes the sonata with dramatic style. It is as entertaining for the audience as it is challenging for the performers.